All Articles by Chris Umiastowski

On the heels of Apple's Q1 2015 earnings, the company's stock reached a new all-time high of $120 during today's trading session. While I really don't care too much about short term stock price movements, this particular move in Apple's stock is a reflection of investor optimism following the most monstrous quarter ever seen.

It's true. In case you didn't catch the headlines from Tuesday, Apple's $18 billion quarterly profit for Q1 fiscal 2015 is the largest quarterly profit of any company in the world in all of history.

Plenty has been written following the quarterly report, so instead of rehashing all of the numbers I'd like to focus on what it all means to the stock longer term. I've been a shareholder of Apple since 2007 and haven't traded single share since that time. So when I look at technology companies from an investment angle I really do walk the long term talk. I think attempting to time the market is a recipe for disaster for most people (including myself), and I'd prefer to make decade plus long bets on quality growth companies. Apple still fits the bill for me.

Centrallo is a brand new productivity app, and if you spend any time making to do lists I think it will quickly win you over as a fan. While it is designed for making lists, it does a whole lot more as I'll explain. I've been a beta user for the last month, and Centrallo has just come out of public beta today. It's rock solid and you can start enjoying it for free on Android or iOS today.

Earlier this week Tim Cook and the team at Apple presented the company's Q4 2014 financial results to Wall Street analysts. The results were obviously very strong, as was guidance for next quarter. This explains the market's positive reaction. Apple stock is trading a couple of points higher the day after. If you need a reminder of just how huge Apple is, revenue for the year was a whopping $183 billion. Apple is by far the largest technology company in the world.

Earlier today billionaire hedge fund icon Carl Icahn released the open letter to Tim Cook that he promised was coming. It's pretty long and the bulk of the content reads like a miniature version of a Wall Street analyst report justifying a "buy" recommendation on the stock.

Yesterday Apple announced iPhone 6 and 6 Plus pre-orders topped 4 million within 24 hours. We told you that this beats the prior record, set by the iPhone 5 launch, where Apple sold had advance orders of only half that many phones. Not that 2 million was a small number — it was insanely high for the time. But now they've doubled the prior record with even higher prices.

Yesterday Apple revealed it's new payment solution, Apple Pay, as part of the big iPhone 6 launch in California. The rumours that had been circulating about what we previously called 'iWallet' were largely correct. And, of course, there is more to the story. But before I dive into my thoughts, Apple watchers who follow the stock might want to browse through this post at Fortune. It's a nice summary of what analysts are saying about Apple Pay.

AAPL has confirmed the next iPhone event will be held on September 9. In eleven days we expect to see a 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and some kind of wearable device. There are rumors of a larger, 5.5-inch iPhone as well, along with rumors that it might cost more than the smaller sizes that came before it. Will anybody want a 5.5-inch iPhone? Can Apple justify a higher price for one? What does it mean to the company's potential profits?

This week AAPL stock price crossed $100, which is equivalent to over $700 prior to the 7:1 stock split that happened earlier this year. This represents a record high. That makes Apple's market value $600 billion. (A company's market value is determined by multiplying the share price by the number of shares in existence.) I've been an Apple shareholder ever since the original iPhone launched. At the time I was working as a sell-side analyst in Toronto covering tech stocks such as Research In Motion (now renamed to BlackBerry). Even though I was totally wrong about how badly Apple (and Android) would destroy BlackBerry, I had a friend of mine, who was living in San Francisco, buy me an iPhone and Fedex it to me in Canada. Even being an EDGE device (i.e. prior to 3G) I was convinced Apple had a game changer on its hands. So I bought the stock for a split-adjusted $19. Yeah. It's been a nice ride.

Late last week news broke that an Apple shareholder, R. Andre Klein, had filed suit against several senior officers of Apple. We've embedded the filing below so you can have a read through it should you wish. Because this is a fairly complex filing I've taken the time to read through it. What I'll offer you here is a simple explanation of the filing along with my opinion in the matter.

Being the world's largest technology company has its perks, including a stream of almost limitless cash. But the law of large numbers also starts to kick in, and a company of Apple's size doesn't seem capable of doing super productive things with all this money.

Last night Apple published its financial results for Q3 fiscal 2014. iMore has already posted a very detailed set of notes from the quarterly conference call, so I'll just recap a few key numbers and then dive into what I think the quarter means to Apple longer term. As per usual, keep in mind I do own shares in the company and I have no plans to sell them anytime soon. My comments represent my thinking and you should not interpret any of this as investing advice.

Yesterday's formal announcement of a partnership between two computing giants, Apple and IBM, came as a big surprise to most industry observers. We hadn't seen any leaks on the subject, and it wasn't something I can recall being the topic of any predictions articles or other "this makes sense" style of article. On the surface, however, there are numerous reasons why it definitely does make sense.

Everyone seems to believe an iWatch is coming. It's been talked about for ages, yet there have been no solid leaks on which to base any meaningful projections. The Pebble has been on the market for a while now. Android Wear is just now starting to ship. (Both pictured above.) It remains to be seen how successful "smartwatch" will be as a category in general. We can only guess that Apple's executive recruitment trends are geared towards turning the Cupertino mobile and computing giant into a luxury brand.

Considering how successful Apple has been it's not unreasonable to wonder … does it make sense for Cook to add new members to the board of directors? That's what the Wall Street Journal reported earlier today. The crux was that the current board is from the Steve Jobs era, with most of the directors over 63 years of age, half of them having been on the board for more than a decade, if not longer. So, given all that, I think it does.

Not that this is any sort of surprise, but Google has finally announced a developer program for the Nest division. The timing couldn't be much better since I just finished writing about why I'm looking forward to the primary mobile players, Apple and Google, integrating "Internet of Things" hooks into their respective operating systems.

Earlier this week rumors surfaced that Nuance Communications is up for sale. Apple is reportedly a huge customer of Nuance, using the firm's voice recognition software to help power Siri. So, if Nuance really is up for sale, should Apple be the ones who close the deal?

Yesterday Apple's stock started trading post 7-1 split. For every share that existed before there are now 6 new shares alongside it. If you owned 100 shares of Apple you now own 700 shares. Instead of the stock trading above $600 it now trades in the $90s.

Apple announced the split in late April alongside the Q2 results. At the time I explained how splits work and how they don't mean anything from a financial perspective. It would be similar to taking your giant slice of pizza and cutting that slice into 7 smaller slices. You'd still have exactly the same amount of pizza.

After WWDC 2014's keynote I went to sleep feeling quite optimistic about AAPL's future. The stock market didn't seem to share my enthusiasm, but as an investor I could hardly care about the short term opinions of Wall Street. I think that to successfully invest in a stock like Apple you need to adopt the same long term thinking that the management team does. You can't get stuck worrying about this quarter's results or the next particular hardware release.

Last night the Apple news we've all been wondering about finally became official: Apple bought Beats The company now run by Tim Cook reached into its wallet and pulled out $2.6 billion big ones (plus another $400 million in stock that vests later on) to acquire Beats Electronics, Beats Audio and of course the incredible talent behind the company. This includes Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, who both become Apple executives.